Risky Venture
by Geoduck
Summary: When your entire future hangs on a single meeting? And that meeting is with your high school rival? You're going to have a bad time.


He handed his card to the receptionist. He hoped his hands weren't obviously shaking when he did so.

"Thank you. The meeting room isn't available yet, but I'll let you gentlemen know when you can go in."

"Thank you very much, Miss. Ah, can you tell me if we'll be meeting with one of Mr. Sohma's juniors?"

"No, sir. Mr. Sohma will be conducting the meeting himself."

"Ah. Well. Thank you for the information."

His colleagues smiled and patted him on the shoulder when he sat down. The two of them might have been happy to hear what she said, but it was not the answer _he _had been hoping for. He hadn't wanted to attend this meeting at all. Less so when he found out that _he _would be responsible for making the pitch. And even less so when he found out that _Sohma _was going to be the one he was making a pitch to.

He could chicken out now and leave. Of course, then the company would definitely go belly up. And where would that leave him? And if he did that, his reputation…

No, the meeting had to happen. After all, there's a chance it could be successful. The company would be saved, and he'd be a hero. It wasn't a huge chance, but it was worth an hour of personal humiliation, right?

"Sirs? Mr. Sohma is ready for you now, if you'll just follow me."

He took a deep breath and got up.

* * *

He and his two colleagues offered their cards to Sohma when they entered the room. He took theirs and offered his in return.

Sohma reached out and shook his two colleagues' hands first, then his. "It's been a long time hasn't it, Sakuragi?"

"Yes. I heard that your wife had come to our last class reunion, but unfortunately I was unable to attend. So I guess I haven't seen you since you graduated, class president."

That startled Yuki slightly. Then he laughed. "It's been a long time since I heard that title. Maybe it's better just to call me by name?"

"All right, Sohma-senpai." He cringed at using that epithet. Was he being too obvious?

"It's good to see you well. After the meeting, let's go out for a drink, so we can catch up on old times, okay?"

"Yes, definitely." Sakuragi could hardly think of anything he'd _less _like to do.

"So, let's get to the topic at hand. I've studied all the materials you've sent, as well as your company balance sheets. I think I've got a pretty good idea of your assets and your liabilities. I believe you have a product demonstration for me?"

"Yes, this is a product we've had under development, it combines the functions of a dating application with a social media and messaging app…" Sakuragi went into his well-practiced presentation.

He stumbled over his words slightly when he looked at Yuki, but soon recovered. There was a look he saw in Yuki's eyes. A sort of far-away expression. 'This is pointless. He's going to reject us. This is all for nothing.' Still, he had started, so he was going to finish.

* * *

Ten of the worst minutes of his life later, Sakuragi concluded his presentation, faking both energy and confidence. "Do you have any questions, senpai?"

"No, thank you. I think all of the information I need is in the materials you sent over beforehand."

Sakuragi sat down. He was resigned to his fate.

Yuki looked pensive for a moment, then finally spoke. "I'm sorry gentlemen. I'm afraid that we won't be able to invest. You're attempting to enter an already crowded marketplace, competing with gigantic corporations. What you are offering isn't in any way new or innovative, and the chances of your company surviving long enough to get the market share you'd need to be profitable-it's not zero, but it's very close to it."

One of Sakuragi's colleagues spoke up. "We could negotiate the terms to make it more palatable…"

"I'm sorry, but you could give us double the equity for half of the money, and your staff all committed to ten-year work contracts, and it would still be a poor investment. I'm sorry, but we are unable to do business." Yuki stood up. "My secretary can show you out."

Sakuragi got up with his colleagues and started shuffling out when Yuki touched his arm. "Nao… let's go get that drink."

* * *

Near the office was a small izakaya. "I like this place. It's small, but quiet this time of day. It'll give us a chance to talk." They entered, removed their shoes and made their way to a low table on tatami in the corner. Yuki made eye contact with the waiter, who nodded. "What do you want, Nao? Beer or sake?"

"I'm not carrying much cash on me, so I could only buy one drink, I think."

"Nonsense. I invited you, so of course I'm paying for everything. Beer or sake?"

"Ah, beer, I think."

"Lager, bitter?"

"Lager."

When the waiter came over, Yuki ordered a brand of beer that Sakuragi was not sure he had ever heard of.

"So, Nao, how have you been?"

For the first time in a while, Sakuragi looked Yuki in the face. "Not that well. My career died about ten minutes ago. I think you were there."

Yuki smiled softly. "Yes. I'm sorry. I wish it could have been different. I swear to you, I tried, Nao. I've been looking at the numbers for days. I was hoping that I could find something there. Something to hang some optimism on. I know it's harsh, but it's also the answer you were expecting, wasn't it?"

They were interrupted by the arrival of the waiter, who dropped off two bottles of beer and two empty glasses, as well as bowls of edamame. They poured the beer into their glasses. Sakuragi was about to take a drink when Yuki clinked his glass against his. "Kanpai!"

"Oh, sorry. Kanpai." He took a long drink and wiped some foam off his lip. "And yes. It was the answer I was expecting."

"Because you've already been to seven different venture capital companies before mine. And they all rejected you."

"Yes."

"So what are you going to do now?"

"I had convinced my partners to agree that this was going to be the last venture capital company we approached. But I've heard them talking before. Thinking about talking to unorthodox investors that are okay with risk. Of course, it would be for less money, and they might want to steer our company in a different direction."

"You're talking about getting a loan from the _yakuza _so they can use your app to advertise sex clubs."

"Yeah. That's what it would end up being."

"God, Nao. How did it get to this? What _happened _to you?"

Sakuragi took another drink. "It wasn't supposed to be like this. I had so many ideas. But I don't know business. I know computers. They knew the business. That's what I thought. So I went with the ideas they thought were more commercially viable. I went with the flow."

He took a long drink and finished his glass. "But they hadn't budgeted enough on development. We were behind schedule. Then the money ran out, and all the other programmers left because we couldn't pay them."

"And that was two years ago."

"Yeah. Two years ago this month."

"And you've been working for no salary for two years."

Sakuragi snorted. "Gee, when you put it like that, it sounds stupid, doesn't it?" The waiter arrived at the table with two more bottles. "The thing is… every decision we made seemed like the right idea at the time. It always seemed like we were so close to the big success. If we just sacrificed a bit more, the payoff would be huge. But nobody believed enough to give us the money we needed. And so we've been hanging on hope for two years."

"How are you living?"

"I had to move back in with my mom, okay? I've been sponging off my mom. I've been getting an _allowance _from her. I used to think _I _could help _her _." He filled his glass. "So this must be pretty damn funny? The guy you hated in high school, now he's thirty years old, has no money, no job, and he lives with his mom. Be sure and tell Manabe about my total disgrace. I'm sure he'll have a good laugh."

Yuki reached across the table and put his hand on Sakuragi's. "Nao. I know you won't believe me. But I promise, I never hated you."

Sakuragi laughed. "Yeah."

"It's true. Despite the rest of the council being… well, _us _, you never stopped working hard and trying to get us on track. That was truly admirable. I wish I had said more at the time. I regret having taken you for granted."

Sakuragi took another drink in silence.

"Listen, Nao. Do you have any idea what my hobby was? Or rather, what it still is?"

Sakuragi shook his head.

"Gardening. You prepare the ground, you plant seeds or seedlings, you take good care of them and protect them in bad weather, and they grow. It's a kind of miracle, you know? That's why I do what I do. I make things grow. I make companies grow-I make people's dreams grow."

"And sometimes you have to kill some dreams off."

"That wasn't your dream today. Look me in the eye and tell me it was your dream to create a phone app for people to arrange anonymous hook-ups with strangers."

"It wasn't like that! It…" He looked down again. "It didn't _start _like that. It wasn't always so seedy. I kept on changing it to make it more like they wanted. I followed their lead on doing whatever it took to make it profitable. There were only three of us, so they always outvoted me. But I figured they knew business better than me."

"Your partners suck. They are lousy at business."

"That's fair to say. But what else could I do? I couldn't just leave. I had sunk so much into it already. I'd lose everything. So I went with the flow." He snorted. "And look how wonderfully it turned out. So I'm just as lousy at business than them. More so."

Yuki smiled. "But what would you do if you had _nothing _to lose instead of everything? What is Nao's dream?"

"I want to help my mom, okay? I never talk about this but…"

"Your mother is deaf, right?"

"How did you know… nevermind, you always know everything. I want to make a phone app that translates between voice and sign language. You'd speak into into the mic, and the phone display would show a person doing the sign language for the words you say. And when you pointed the camera at a person speaking in sign, it could convert that to voice."

"So, if I were a deaf person, why wouldn't I just type what I wanted to say on my phone? And why couldn't a hearing person just use voice recognition and show the deaf person in written characters what they just said?"

"Because a lot of deaf people have trouble reading and writing. It doesn't come naturally to them. When we hearing people read, in our heads we hear the words, right? But a lot of deaf people can't relate to that. Reading becomes really frustrating and difficult for some of them."

"I didn't know that. That's very interesting."

"With a translator app that understands sign language, any deaf person who knows sign could communicate with any hearing person who understands Japanese. It would make life so much easier for a lot of people."

"That sounds like a fantastic idea. That's an amazing dream. The kind of dream that's worth pursuing."

"The problem is, it would be a lot of work. And my partners-they didn't think there would be any money in it. They wanted to make a lot of money. And I'm not blaming them for everything. I wanted to get rich, too. I figured that once I had money I could work on the things _I _wanted to. They said there was no chance of success with an app like that. I believed them."

"I'm sure they were wrong. I mean, it's not the kind of thing that would earn you _billions _of yen, but I could imagine a lot of schools, a lot of government agencies that would love a tool that would make life easier for hard-of-hearing people. With the right business people behind you, you could potentially get a reliable revenue stream from this."

"It all comes down to business, though. The only people who would work with me at this point would be fellow washed-up failures."

Yuki sighed, then reached an arm out. Suddenly, he chopped Sakuragi on the head.

"OW! The hell? What was that for?"

"I seem to remember Kakeru doing that whenever you said anything that annoyed him. Where could you possibly find capable, intelligent business people who would work with you? If only you had a fairy godmother who just happens to work in venture capital and who knows hundreds of brilliant people in business with know-how and contacts, who are looking for one thing: someone with a good idea. If only that fairy godmother was sitting across the table from you right now."

"I… I don't get it."

"Nao, listen carefully. I think you have a good idea. I know people who can turn your idea into a business. They can get funding for it. There will be companies who will be _eager _to invest with you. They'll have to wait behind me, of course, because I have first dibs."

"But… why?"

"I know _you _. I know the annoyed student council secretary who worked harder than anyone. I trust the programmer who continued to work for two years at no pay for just a slight chance of success. When a man like that has a good idea of his own-don't you think he'll work even harder to make his own dream come true? And I already know you're going to work hard for this. Harder than anything you've worked for in your life." Yuki smiled. "All I'm doing is helping make sure that you actually get _paid _for your hard work this time."

Sakuragi's voice sounded raspy. "This can't be real. You're about to say that you're joking."

"I told you that I like to help things grow, Nao. I want to help you grow, too."

Sakuragi looked straight down at the table. Yuki could see the tears falling onto the surface. "I don't know what to say. I can hardly believe it. Thank you for looking out for me, senpai."

"You're welcome. I'll always look… wait, what's this 'senpai' business? You did that in the presentation, too. I don't remember you ever calling me 'senpai' back in school."

Sakuragi sat up and wiped his nose. "Didn't I? In any case, you _are _actually my senpai, so…"

Yuki narrowed his eyes, though the effect was softened by his sly grin. "You were ass-kissing, weren't you? Buttering me up."

"No, the truth is… yes. I was absolutely kissing your ass. Did it work?"

"Eh, not really. Did you know that my deputy thought that I shouldn't be in the meeting today? He was afraid that my judgement would be impaired because we were classmates, and that I'd end up investing in your company out of personal loyalty."

"To tell you the truth, the reason why I did the speaking today was because my partners _hoped_ you'd end up investing with us out of loyalty. That didn't work either, didn't it, sen… uh."

"Just call me Yuki. I think by this point we've known each other long enough to call each other by given names."

"Thank you, Yuki."

"So, before we get too drunk, can you hand me my card back for just a second? I promise I'll give it back."

"Sure." Nao retrieved the card from his pocket and slid it across the table. Yuki flipped it over and wrote something on the back, then returned it.

"That's my personal telephone number. Call me Monday and we can set up a time to talk about possible future business partners for you."

"Thank you so much. I can't begin…"

"Then don't." He waved to the waiter. "More beer here! And some yakitori!" He turned back to Nao. "I haven't had a good night's drinking in a long time."

"Me neither. Mostly because I can't afford it. Hey, Yuki?"

"What?"

"When you said, 'I want to help you grow'... was that a joke about me being short?"

Yuki smiled. "There may have been that element to it."

Nao smacked the table with his palm. "I'll have you know that I'm exactly the national average height. You can't call me 'Chibi' just because you and Manabe happen to be freakishly tall!"

"You're right, I apologize. Forgive me?"

Nao grumbled. "Well, this beer is pretty damn good, so I'll let you get away with it this time."

"Thank you, Nao. I can always count on you to be the bigger man."

"Now, listen here…" More beer arrived. Yuki and Nao filled their glasses. "This is going to be happening all night, isn't it?"

"It might be. Hopefully you're not short-tempered."

"Of course not… princess."

Yuki grinned. He clinked his glass against Nao's.

"Kanpai!"

* * *

Epilogue:

They continued drinking for several hours. As it turns out, they both were of the "happy" variety of drunk, so they had a great time. Kakeru was particularly amused by the drunken selfies they sent him on their night of debauchery.

The next morning, Machi was quite surprised to find her husband and her former classmate asleep on her living room floor.

* * *

Notes:

Nao is one of my favorite side characters from Fruits Basket, but there are almost no stories where he plays a significant part, so when this idea came to me, I had to write it out.

I was briefly tempted to make this a romance as well, but I think that would have added some unpleasant sexual harassment overtones to the proceedings.


End file.
